In a recent Structured Group, we studied a section with two beautiful parts that fuel my fire. That was weeks ago but they’re still on my mind and I’d like to share them with the blog-universe.

In my first post I mentioned how I’m not sure what shape this blog will take. Not surprisingly, there’s a vein of comparing / contrasting gestalt with other methodologies. I’m passionate about theory and that’s why I like teaching and supervising in addition to doing gestalt therapy. Making sense of the world (psychological / philosophical theory) is one of the relationships that hold me up.

(I also mentioned in my first post I’d be adding a disclaimer to every post and saying what music I’m listening to. False. Writing on the fly. No music. And I got over my initial blogging resistance / fear of being sued. Ha.)

So here are the two quotes and then I’ll explain why I love them.

“This is to psychologize without pre-judgment of normal or abnormal, and from this point of view psychotherapy is a method not of correction but of growth.”

Mmm.

“The psychotherapy proposed in the previous chapters emphasizes: concentrating on the structure of the actual situation; preserving the integrity of the actuality by finding the intrinsic relation of socio-cultural, animal, and physical factors; experimenting; promoting the creative power of the patient… ”

Double mmm.

Sometimes people start counseling with the assumption they will be judged. Sometimes this has fear with it (“please don’t judge me”) and sometimes this is welcomed (“please tell me what I’m doing wrong”).

Judgment and correction go hand in hand. Gestalt therapy is not of correction, but of growth. There’s absolutely nothing *wrong* with the way a person is living. There is, however, a chance to optimize and to grow into new areas which will certainly *improve* the way a person is living… literally opening up new options… new skills… more payoffs… less costs.

There’s an Alice in Wonderland quote I keep in my office.  Alice comes to a crossroad and asks the cat, “which way should I go?” The cat says, “where are you trying to get to?” Alice says, “I don’t really know.” The cat says, “then it doesn’t matter which road you take.”

Gestalt therapy, similar to the cat, is interested in *your* desires/goals. If you’re not sure what your desires are, do you desire to know what your desires are?

Then by “preserving the integrity of the actuality by finding the intrinsic relation[s]…” we can land on a clearer image of what path may be the most valuable to you. It’s not correction. It’s examination. From examining, your perceptions become clearer / brighter / truer and then your “creative power” is “promoted.” Alice gets a better sense of where she’d like to get to and which path would give her the best odds. AND there’s additional self-support to be able to take the risk of choosing the path, even if she’s not certain it will pan out.

Gestalt develops your ability to self-support. Lara Perls said, “we support the client as much as necessary and as little as possible.”  The second part, “as little as possible,” is because we want to increase your ability to self-support.  We don’t support too much because then it would get in the way of developing your own abilities.  We’re looking for your growing edge (within the “intrinsic relations”) so that you can be with it and relate to it – thereby moving it and increasing/expanding your comfortable area of self-support.  The scary part about therapy is the ‘growing edge’ is where your anxiety lies.   But we also support you as much as much as necessary… while at the same time we’re trying to work ourselves out of a job. We’re very interested in your ability to feel grounded and supported within yourself. This often means reconfiguring your relationships. What is supporting you? Your relationship with your breathing? With posture? With the ground? With your ears? With Sam Adams? With a good book? With your spouse? With an imagined future? Are you aware of the relationship that’s holding you up? What’s the cost of that relationship?

It’s not correction. It’s growth. It’s examining the relationships, lighting things up. We want you to know what movements you’re making, what the costs are, and what the payoffs are.   In the words of Perls, Hefferline and Goodman, “At this point, the patient can take over on his own.”